


Why I Smile

by ClaireKat



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, FRICK THIS IS CUTE, Fluff, One Shot, SO MUCH FLUFF, Yaaaaaas, i get so intense, i just love this couple so much, mmmmmm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4901002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaireKat/pseuds/ClaireKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lan Fan reflects on all the ways Ling has brought light and happiness into her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why I Smile

**Author's Note:**

> This couple is one of my favorites, I wish I could write more for them. I love them so much ahhhhh! This was really sweet to write, I hope you enjoy!

            The air was calm and crisp, a veneer of calm that settled over the land as Lan Fan practiced her fighting moves on the various training posts set up in the yard before her. She knew that she was tired, that it was probably time for a break, but she didn’t want to stop. The silence that surrounded her seemed to urge her on as she continued to land blow after powerful blow on the lifeless wooden training dummies she had grown all too used to fighting. A cartwheel, a jump, a roundhouse kick, a lethal punch to the dummy’s jaw that sent a splintering ripple effect expanding through the wood until nothing was left but the empty husk that used to comprise the doll’s head. Lan Fan’s breathing was labored, her bangs sticking to her forehead as the sweat dripped from her every pore. Despite the coolness in the air, she had never felt warmer flames burning in her core. There wasn’t even a threat that she was training to face; she was just letting off steam.

            Lan Fan had never been one to express her emotions clearly. From a young age, she had only been taught to oppress them, because emotions were something that the enemy could use against you. Emotions equal weakness, no matter what kind of emotions they might be. Cockiness, worry, fear, pain, elation, joy, triumph…Lan Fan had always been taught to act like a blank canvas, strong and unreadable in the face of any threat that she came to. It had been so hard for her to interact with the master she was assigned as a charge, the young prince who was always bursting with so much emotion Lan Fan sometimes wondered if he would split at the seams. The strength and ostentatiousness of his emotions had hit Lan Fan in the face like a punch from the sun the first time she had met him, and ever since her perception of him was always embellished in an outline of a halo of light. Whether it was an after effect of his light on her eyes, or simply an escape route her bottled up emotions hijacked, she never knew. And she didn’t really care.

            He was always such a pain, that stupid prince. It occurred to her the moment he had opened his mouth and engaged in his first interaction with her that he simply was not the stereotypical “princely” type. The energetic, friendly youth had greeted her with an obnoxiously chipper smile and an introduction in the warmest voice that had ever graced her ears. He had even stooped to the level of flinging his arms around her and entrapping her in an embrace that sent a shiver across her shoulders and had her hair standing on end. How improper, this prince’s way of doing things; did he even realize what her role was, what she had been sent to him for? Surely he couldn’t have been completely oblivious, considering her grandfather, his current vassal, was the one who had brought her in after the unfortunate passing of both of her parents from the fever that had been spreading throughout the lower clans for quite some time.

            Lan Fan’s fists moved faster, her feet crushing the delicate blades of grass and kicking up some of the ones that had been torn loose from the earth in the friction of her movements. She spun and decided to test both her vision and her reflexes by pinning the blades that had not yet settled to the ground to some nearby trees with a couple of shurikens. Her aim couldn’t have been more perfect, each blade being whisked away by the sharp edge of her throwing stars. She had come to see her weapons as an extension of herself, though with that idea she tried not to let her thoughts stray to the extension of one of her appendages that now—no, she shifted her thoughts back to her training.

            She spun on her heel and thrust her leg out to clear the head off of another one of the dummies. She didn’t want to waste the momentum, and instead followed the flow, using one hand to cartwheel into an upward position before using her momentum to hurl two kunais into a tree on either side of the shurikens she had just thrown. They landed perfectly, gleaming in the bright afternoon sun, and Lan Fan took a moment to wipe her forehead before launching herself wholeheartedly back into her sparring. Her thoughts traveled back to thoughts of the past, of the emotions she had never been permitted to show and the boy who had never been clever enough or strong enough to hide any of his emotions.

            Lan Fan thought she might have hated him at first. She was young, but not young enough that she didn’t understand that he wasn’t acting beneficially. Despite her differing thoughts, she never questioned him. Her grandfather had made it clear that any public display of disapproval or opposition to the prince was strictly forbidden, and would be met with death, no warnings. The prince was the only authority, the only one whose words, actions, existence, mattered. Lan Fan was smart enough to know that her grandfather was not lying to her, nor was he being too severe. The more Lan Fan grew, the more she realized that the prince _was_ the only one that mattered. The more that she grew, the more she realized that she had also been insurmountably wrong about him.

            They were both children when they met, and what could Lan Fan have expected? Her heartache, pain, and suffering were the only things that she carried with her, and she wasn’t even permitted to feel them, to admit that they existed; even to herself. Lan Fan felt trapped in a blackness that was only disturbed by the prince’s joy, happiness, and brightness. His light pricked through the darkness, irritated it, and for the first few years Lan Fan hated it. She tried to stop herself from looking forward to the prince’s smiling face, she did her best not to laugh at the jokes he had told her that she could only laugh at in private. She only cried about how thankful she was for his kindness and his gentle soul in the cold seconds of loneliness she was able to procure for herself once or twice a day. Her emotions were begging to break through, but she knew that was improper, that emotions were not permitted.

            The first time he caught her crying, Lan Fan thought she would die simply from the shame. She was so sure he had been attending to some other duties in a completely separate area of the estate while she was out training in the designated area. The anniversary of her parents’ death, the stress of holding herself together, it had all been too much for her at the time. Lan Fan stopped her training, her breath still heaving, and strode over to the tree her weapons still sat obediently in, waiting for her to collect them. She closed her eyes, the echoes of her tears that day long ago reverberating in her mind as she forced herself back into her training. She flung the weapons in her hands at the dummies behind her, each one landing in a separate dummy’s chest, all in a line. Her aim had improved. She flexed her hand, trying not to listen to the sound it made, only wanting to be proud of its improvement.

            She pushed thoughts of the present away and dove back into the past as she sprinted to engage in another sparring session with an untouched dummy. Lan Fan remembered that shame. In her mind she had prepared to end her life; no, she had prepared to offer for the prince to do it. Surely a vassal that lost their composure like that would be useless in the thick of battle, perhaps even just standing at their master’s side. Emotions were weakness, and hers had finally broken her. As she knelt to the ground, placing her forehead on her hands as they rested on the floor in the most reverent and respectful bow, she sniffled out her sincerest apologies. The tears had flowed freely, her voice shook like an earthquake, and her hand trembled even more violently as she had removed her kunai from its sheath and offered it to the prince, too ashamed to even meet his gaze. She knew it must have been disgusted, reproving…even a prince as kind and gentle as this one had to understand that she had stepped out of place.

            The warmth of his fingers as they had curled around hers to accept her blade had brought even stronger torrents of tears to her eyes. Surprisingly enough, these had been tears of joy; she had touched the hand of the boy that somewhere in her heart a love had started to blossom for. Her thoughts had seized as she realized in that moment the intense hatred she thought she had felt for him had really been self-loathing. In the recesses of herself, Lan Fan had truly hated that she could not return the emotions that the prince had given to her. She could not permit herself to smile, to laugh, to bring him the joy that he had brought her. Lan Fan hated that she could not give him the love that she knew he deserved.

            But his response had surprised her more than anything. Taking the blade from her hand, Lan Fan had returned to her state of prostration, her body silently shaking as the sobs of knowing that she would never be able to express her true feelings, even at the end, overtook her. She waited for what seemed like an eternity for the prince to issue her punishment, but the pierce of the blade never came. Instead two warm, strong arms looped around her, lifting her from her lowly state and pulling her into a body that was wholly unfamiliar to her. Who was she kidding; the whole expression was completely foreign.

            His voice whispered to her to stop crying. His hand stroked her back with the softness of a feather and the reassurance of a lover’s touch. Her whole body had frozen as his cheek pressed against hers, pulling her deeper into the embrace that had left her feeling as though lightening had struck her directly. His body shook with the tears, her tears, which he took upon himself, and his voice told her that she was not alone, that she couldn’t act like it anymore. He explained that he had been trying all this time to see her smile, he was sure that she was hiding it because it was too beautiful for anyone to bear, but she could trust him. He could handle her radiance, if she would only show it to him. He said that he would never rid the world of something so precious, and he would never tell anyone that he felt this way, either. He thought that if he told everyone else the secret of her magnificence, it would make them jealous, and they would try to take her from him. But she was _his_ vassal. He wanted her strength, her protection, and even to share her pain, if she would let him; he was greedy.

            Lan Fan stopped her training, her hands seizing up as she collapsed to her knees, the weight of that memory resurfacing after being buried so deep for so many years enough to stop her in her tracks. Tears bloomed in the corners of her eyes as though they were the precious jewels of her soul answering the call that he had made for them to appear in her memory. Lan Fan let the weapons fall from her hands, let the tears flow down her cheeks, and let her emotions spill out. She had come far enough that she wasn’t ashamed of them anymore, she wasn’t scared of them; she was strong enough to embrace them. Ever since the death of her grandfather, Lan Fan had sworn that she would make him proud. She would make him proud despite her weaknesses, despite her faults, and she had discovered that in order to do that she had to face those things head on. She looked at the arm that wasn’t hers, that she didn’t recognize, that she wasn’t sure if she would ever accept as her own, and stroked it with her real hand. The hardness of the metal reminded her of the past hardness of her heart, of her stubbornness, her hardheadedness…perhaps this was a reminder to her to stand strong even in the face of failure. Her prince had never let failure stand in his way. Neither had her grandfather.

            She stood back up, letting the tears continue to flow as she carried on with her training. Her emotions had never been the same since the day the prince had spoken those words to her. She let her worry for him show, she let her anger get the best of her when it came to protecting him, and she let her selfishness towards him radiate like the sun. He would always only be _her_ prince, and she would be damned if anyone ever tried to make it otherwise. Her tears fell delicately as she continued to ravage the dummies in front of her, though her movements came to a halt as a familiar hand stilled her good shoulder with the most delicate of touches.

            “I’ve been looking for you.”

            His voice didn’t soothe the tears, but somehow they _did_ change.

            “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. The emperor deals with a lot more paper work than I expected. If I thought it wouldn’t be detrimental I’d ban the infernal process all together. But, when it comes to reuniting the clans—are you crying?”

            “I was just…remembering some things, my lord.” Her voice trembled with the weight of the emotions that descended upon her in this moment. Only he could ever bring this kind of emotion flowing to her heart, coursing through her veins…he was the one who taught her what it meant to feel again. “Nothing to trouble yourself with.”

            “Well you know I will anyway.” He wrapped his other arm around her and turned her to face him, the halo of light drying up the vestiges of that powerful reminiscence. “I always worry when my soon-to-be empress is crying.”

            “My lord, please—”

            “You’ll have to stop that when we get married. You haven’t forgotten my name, have you?”

            She sighed, steeling herself. “Ling.”

            His smile rivaled the brightness of the sun. “Good. Now, what were you saying, Lan Fan?”

            She tried to focus as his face grew closer to hers with every passing moment. “I was saying for you not to worry my lo—…Ling. About me. Because it’s the other way around, you know. My job is to worry about you.”

            “Oh, is that so?” His breath tickled her ear. “You would rob your emperor of worrying over the condition of something that is so wholly his?”

            Her vision blurred. “My lord…”

            “I suppose it will take some getting used to,” Ling chuckled, leaning in to close the space between them as his lips molded lovingly to Lan Fan’s, successfully stealing her breath away. “But we have a life time to work on it. After all, I was the one who taught you how to smile again. Surely I can teach you to call me by my real name.”

            Lan Fan wasn’t listening anymore. She cupped his face with her real hand, and brought her lips back to his; her metal hand twitched as one of his hands clutched it with a resolve demonstrating that he accepted all of her. He was right; she was wholly his. And he would always be wholly hers, regardless of what capacity it was in. Lan Fan loved Ling, and she wasn’t afraid of those feelings anymore. After all, Ling was the one who had taught her how to love.


End file.
